Foundation hospitals 'will destroy NHS'

Foundation hospitals would be a "gift" to the Conservatives that would make it easier for them to privatise the entire National Health Service, a leading union leader said yesterday.

As union opponents united to defeat the Government over its flagship health policy, Sir Bill Morris said the reforms would mean a Labour government "legislating for inequality" for the first time in its history.

In his final conference speech before retiring as general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union Sir Bill won a standing ovation with an impassioned plea to vote against changes that he believed would create a two-tier service.

Sir Bill said "successive Tory governments" had tried to dismantle the NHS, which was the central pillar of the welfare state established by the post-war Labour government.

"To this day, the NHS remains the cornerstone of the 1945 legacy . . . and foundation hospitals would be a self-inflicted wound - a gift to a future Tory government to destroy the NHS."

Related Articles

After a fiery debate that saw strong support for the reforms from constituency delegates, the main unions joined forces behind a motion tabled by Unison, representing public sector workers, calling for foundation hospitals to be removed from the Government's Health and Social Care Bill.

It was the third time that Tony Blair had been defeated on the conference floor since he became leader nine years ago.

Foundation hospitals, chosen from three-star trusts, will be given greater financial and management freedoms with key decisions being taken by locally elected boards. Opponents say the plans will make the best hospitals better and the poorer performers worse.

The emphatic vote, taken on a show of hands, came despite a last-minute appeal from John Reid, the Health Secretary, for delegates to back him.

The Government was also defeated by 60 per cent to 40 per cent in a card vote on a separate motion outlining broad themes of its health policy, tabled by Shrewsbury and Atcham constituency.

In a deliberate attempt to isolate the unions and blame them for disloyalty, Government officials said the constituencies had voted by two to one in favour of the constituency motion that backed "greater decentralisation" and giving hospitals and local services "greater control over their own affairs".

Mr Reid said the Government was involved in the biggest project ever undertaken in this country to improve health care. Foundation hospitals would part of that revolution.

Appealing for delegates to give the reforms a chance he said: "To hear Labour delegates stand on this platform and tell us we shouldn't pass power to the ordinary people of this country . . . saddens me greatly." He acknowledged that change was never easy but insisted it was time for the party to be "pioneers of our time".

"If we choose the other way, it will not just be Labour which will lose affection and support. It will be the NHS and everyone of you who loses out."

Afterwards, Mr Reid's aides made clear that there would be no backing down, saying that patients across the country were "more important than four trade unions".

Dave Prentis, Unison's general secretary, said delegates were angry that the plans had been "parachuted" into Labour's programme without a mention in the manifesto and without any consultation.

The legislation was not about "devolution" but "separation", he insisted. "It's about splitting up, hiving off, with no vision, dividing the best from the rest." Sharon Holder, from the GMB union, said the plans were "just one small step away from full privatisation".

But Jane MacKenzie, from Shrewsbury and Atcham, said that to make Britain's NHS the best, party activists had to support new ideas like foundation hospitals. "We must put patients before politics," she insisted, to loud applause.

Afterwards Frank Dobson, the former health secretary who is now a leading opponent of foundation hospitals, predicted that the legislation would not survive in its current form. He believed that the Lords would amend the Bill to insist on pilot schemes for foundation hospitals before the full policy went ahead.

Given the high numbers of Labour MPs opposed to the plans, the Government would then struggle to overturn the amended Bill when it returns to the Commons.